What went wrong? Source of California oil spill still elusive

The company operating the pipeline that recently leaked thousands of gallons of crude oil off the California coast says it may be months before investigators learn what went wrong.

Officials say they’ve
been able to rake up over 9,000 gallons of oil around the
vicinity where the leak was spotted earlier this week, but
cleanup efforts aren’t expected to end anytime soon, and
determining the cause of the leak may still take some
time.

Plains All American Pipeline on Friday said it could be weeks, or
perhaps months, before investigators determine what caused
upwards of 105,000 gallons of crude to escape into the Pacific
Ocean earlier this week near Santa Barbara, California.

“We have not even uncovered the pipe yet,” Patrick
Hodgins, the company’s senior director of safety, told reporters
on Friday.

According to the Associated Press, Plains officials can’t say
whether two malfunctions that occurred before Tuesday’s spill
sparked the disaster.

“We were having some pump problems on the pipeline,”
Rick McMichael, a senior director for the company, told AP.
“Whether it led to the leak or not is part of our
investigation.”

In accordance with requirements of the Pipeline and Hazardous
Materials Safety Administration, Plains will have to remove the
broken parts of the pipe, conduct analyses, and then drain the
rest of the line.

The company shut the flow of oil going through Line 091 on
Tuesday morning, California’s KTLA News reported, after a drop in
pressure was discovered. A service order was issued in the early
afternoon, and the leak was confirmed around two hours after the
pressure drop was first reported.

California Gov. Jerry Brown was driven to declare a state of
emergency after the spill occurred on Tuesday. Originally the
United States Coast Guard suspected only around 21,000 gallons of
oil had ended up in the ocean, but in the days since Plains has
admitted that the actual amount could be upwards of five-times
that figure.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Plains has accumulated more
than 175 safety and maintenance infractions during the last
decade, but Hodgins, the senior director of safety, said that’s
“well within industry norms.”